


Avatar: Legend of Reiho (Book One: Acceptance)

by OfWordsAndSentences



Series: Avatar: the Legend of Reiho [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Acceptance, Avatar, Destiny, Fate, Friendship, Gen, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-30 23:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6446518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfWordsAndSentences/pseuds/OfWordsAndSentences
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after the Unified Water Tribe Uprising and the demise of Avatar Korra, an unsuspecting Earthbender in a straining world named Reiho must learn to embrace her destiny as the new Avatar and pick up where Korra left off: trying (and most times, failing) to reunite a world divided.</p><p>But the world is not as accepting of the Avatar as it once was, and Reiho has to do her part to save it, all while risking the impending cusp of a Civil War in the making and attempting to stay alive through various assassination attempts. </p><p>On her way to realizing her full potential, Reiho learns that the road to acceptance is blocked by many obstacles, physical and mental. But the true test is discovering just how many she is able to climb over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The First Sign

**Author's Note:**

> This story is still at the beginning stages and I'm still iffy about the time periods, so bear that in mind.

Haruna is like a plague.

An invisible mass centrally placed in the pit of my entire existence, sucking at my life force and slowly mopping up whatever will I have to go on. You never imagine yourself as someone possessing the ability and desire to take the life of another - you're not that demented. But a person like Haruna catapults herself into your life, instantly becoming the center of your universe by force and suddenly, that blunt knife the butcher from the market had borrowed you doesn't seem so taboo anymore.

That leather cord you tie around your dusty, cream linen skirt to keep it in place magically has more than one use. The hunting pit in the bordering Sand Forests amazingly isn't just used for capturing beasts and strangely looks like it can fit an average sized woman in her mid twenties. Oddly enough, Haruna's description. Huh. What a coincidence. Well, what do you know?

It isn't like I absolutely despise my older sister - I'm not a saint but my dislike for my life's circumstances is not capable of making me hate someone. Someone that I once shared a womb with at different times, for that matter - I'm just not particularly fond of the situation her arrival in my life has shoved me into.

Living in the sand-bending region of the Earth Kingdom has its ups and downs just like everywhere else, but Haruna's presence here has made them downs and downs. Endless bottomless pits with my name on each ownership tag. She has managed to attach weights to both of my ankles I am simply not strong enough to earth-bend off, in the form of a baby. A son. Her son.

Our parents were not the best to have ever existed. Mother taught us that the ability to bend was the only ability either of us should ever aspire to acquire, and without that ability, we are nothing more than mere girls that are to sit in the same position for years and years until a man looked at one of us long enough and decided to take one as his wife. When I moved a rock at the age of three, Mother finally had someone to love. When Haruna didn't move anything and kept getting older, Mother never looked at her ever again. Father wanted sons and got daughters instead so that's the end of his elaboration.

Our parents were not the best, but they at least taught us the value of common sense and how not to get yourself pregnant before marriage. Apparently, Haruna had skipped out on that speech, and nine months later came her son, Fidget. She's lucky Mother and Father aren't alive to bask in the 'great shame of her misfortune' as they would have constantly called it. But I wasn't granted such a luxury. 

Haruna came to my small living area in the sand-bending region with a sob story of a little baby boy and his father who was practically non-existent, and me being the sucker for a good tale I am, I agreed to let them stay with me until my sister could get back on her feet and earn her keep to support both herself and her son - there was only so much my earnings in the butcher shop could cover. I agreed to let them stay, even though I knew the Western Earth Kingdom Deserts aren't the picture of safety and high-living. 

One of those specks of pure evil marring the otherwise would-be great area to live in comes speeding down the pathway to mine - and now Haruna's - small hut and I can't believe my eyes as I watch them bend the sand and increase their speed. Everyone who has a brain and frequently makes use of it knows about the Quad, who they are, and what lengths they will go to get what they want. Even the local Peace Enforcers are terrified to the bone of them.

A group of three sand-benders and one fire-bender who passes the time by occasionally dabbling in murderous activities. Collecting loans and precious pieces from people they know cannot pay. Covering the debtors' houses in a layer of sand and striking lightning at it, instantly turning the entire thing into what they call glass. Have you ever tried to live in a house of this glass? One giant boulder thrown at it and that's the end. Guess who has to move?

The whole reason I had built my hut away from the densely populated areas was to escape the Quad. Sure, it means solitude and twice as much transportation payment to reach the city itself, and the markets and shops in it. But it also means no Quad. No glass house and no working overtime to earn back the money they'll surely take from me. And currently, after paying for Fidget's crazy costly baby food and the damage to a bar's interior caused by a drunken Haruna, I have none to give. A glass house is something I can't afford to have, not right now. 

I turn away from the windows to inform Haruna of our approaching confrontation, but she is one step ahead. Before I have to tell her, she picks up Fidget with a wooden toy in his mouth and waits for me to bend a hole underground for them to escape. Being the only bender in our household, I am also the one who has to shoulder the responsibility of facing a dispute, even if that means certain as ever death.

I don't allow myself to ponder on the thought of these being my last minutes alive. Many that have countered the attacks of the Quad have rarely survived to feel a sliver of the pain of their own stupidity, talk less of live to tell the tale. There is a possibility my story won't be any different, but it's a chance I'm willing to take. My bending isn't offensive nor special - I don't even know how to bend metal or lava, like most earth-benders of my generation - but I can bend sand in ways that have had people taking cautionary steps back.

I can hold my own until Haruna and Fidget escape unscathed, Fidget, especially. 

My sister and I make eye contact as I begin to close up the hole. She clutches an unlit flare, holds Fidget close to her chest and nibbles at her already worried lip. "They'll kill you, Reiho," she tells me like I don't already know. "if they don't do to you what they do to the other young girls first."

"I'm not scared,"

"And I can't understand how,"

You don't really care, I want to scream at the top of my lungs into her round, chubby face that's a lot like mine. You just don't want the breadwinner dying on you because then, who'd take care of the boy when you go out and have your fill with the newest man? For a minute, I contemplate doing just that: screaming at her. Or pushing Fidget out of the way so Haruna can come die with me like I'd always dreamed. 

Instead, I turn away and say, "Get out of here. The tunnel leads to the oasis twenty paces right of the Sand Forests. That's all I can do for you. You'll have to fend for yourself from now on, Haruna. Take care of the bo-"

I never finish closing the hole. The sand-benders rip apart the fortified door to my small hut and don't waste time in pulling the sand out from under my feet and causing a ripple that sends me flying backwards into the wooden dining table. For a while, all I can see is black and all I can hear is a child's screaming, a woman's begging, and words synonymous with 'give us' and 'the money.'

For a while, I'm convinced my back is broken and I'm a stone's throw from being dead. Then I crack my eyes open, and see Fidget lying on the floor crying his eyes away, three of the Quad standing over him, just watching. I see a man clad in strips of linen cloth covering his entire face except his eyes dragging Haruna outside. And I know what they plan to do to her. What they would have done to me did they not think the force of their throw had killed me. And I lose it all. 

Borrowing strength from a place I didn't know existed, I feel myself lurch to my feet, ignoring the splinters of wood still buried in my back through the fabric of my sleeveless tunic. Haruna's cries as the man outside tries to rip off her clothes is like fuel to my undefined rage, a spark to ignite the tornado of anger that sits formerly undisturbed in the base of my chest. Only when I release a battle cry unlike anything I've ever heard do all four men look back at me, and take the cautionary step away that is expected. Everything else after that happens slower than usual. 

Though I put the required space between my feet and throw out my fist, ready to sand-bend the lot of them to kingdom come, it isn't sand that I command to move. Upon seeing what actually comes out in a blazing red, yellow and orange inferno out of my outstretched fist, the Quad, myself and even Haruna who runs to protect Fidget, we are all stunned. A burst of sizzling-hot, red fire extends out of my balled up hand and like a fist, engulfs the Quad in flames before blowing them out of my hut. 

They fly into the mid-day sky until I can no longer see them, and my flames dissipate into a lowly burning hiss. Half of the pathway leading to the hut has been turned to glass and the hem of my skirt is singed but only in the slightest. I try to finger the splinters in my back, and I touch nothing but my hot skin bereft of anything wooden. Like they'd been fried right off into ashes. 

As I sit next to her on the ground, a foot away from our demolished door, both Haruna and Fidget look at me as if I am made of solid gold pieces. Coincidentally, that's what I feel like. "You know what this means." She says. 

Of course I know what this means. It can only ever mean one thing. 

Because I'm an earth-bender who's just bent fire. I'm the Avatar.


	2. The Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story takes place approximately eighteen years after Korra's death, where Reiho is eighteen. Just wanted to clear that up.

Mother had always dreamed of one of her darling daughters being just more than darling. And when I put it that way, Mother sounds like a loving spirit who only wanted the best for her children while she was still alive, which is entirely not the case. The true measure of a person isn't in their good intentions, but the means by which they attempt to achieve these intentions. Mother's means were immensely despicable. 

Neither my sister nor myself were worthy of her time or attention if we couldn't bend anything, didn't turn out to be suddenly royalty of something or somewhere, couldn't speak a million languages before the age of five, didn't have three eyes or something. Her whole insistence that both Haruna and I were meant to be and do something bigger than ourselves was the most baseless thing I have ever had the unwanted pleasure of experiencing to this day. 

She, a common trader from the Northern Water Tribe, wasn't a bender, and neither was my father. It's harsh (like she would have spared me the same courtesy), but she wasn't anyone that required a conversation or a second look at best. She wasn't tragically beautiful or tragically talented. She was just some woman that married young and dreamed big, unfortunate for her two little, chubby daughters. Mother, even when she was on her deathbed, was convinced beyond reasonable doubt that at least one of her offspring was meant for greater things even if she wouldn't be alive to sponge off of the glory and adoration those greater things would lead to. 

For eighteen years, I thought her utterly insane, bonkers. A bad mother from the start to the very end. And yeah, she was all of those things. She gave the word 'neglect' new meaning and made me wish numerous times that I had just been born an orphan and left on the steps of some poor-as-dirt family. She was a lot of things, and right is one of them. Right for just one of her children, maybe.

I can almost feel her cackling in the grave. Dancing in her bed of dirt and worms, her spirit making an appearance on my shoulders and singing into my ears, whispering 'I told you's and 'you see's. At least, her spirit would have the decency to haunt my dreams and shove her predictions and persuasions into my already crowded mind. Father, Father, Father. I make a mental note to travel all the way back to Omashu Reborn, where the pair of them are buried, and have a picnic over their graves. Then 'accidentally' spill something just for good measure.

Mother was right. Mother is right. And I hate it with every part of my being, because now, I have a completely new set of responsibilities to carry out. The amount of people that depend on my actions has increased by a tenfold and now encompasses the whole world. I can no longer live in the shadows of everyone else and pretend like my life isn't worth a measly grain of salt. I'm no longer Reiho Dokō-kikai, that quiet, orphan, sand-bending girl that has a really attractive sister. I'm Reiho Dokō-kikai, that quiet, orphan, sand-bending girl that has a really attractive sister, the Avatar. And I hate it, I really do. 

I hate it so much, I ponder the possibility of dipping a toe in the Selfish Pond and throwing myself out of the moving cart that carries Haruna, a fidgeting Fidget, three of the Island representatives and myself to Korra Island, where my life will reach its peak, everyone tells me.

They say when a new Avatar is chosen, the eyes of the standing sculptures of both Avatar Aang and Avatar Korra are illuminated for approximately five-ten seconds. A sundial at the base of both sculptures points to a specific direction - in my case, west - and representatives of the Island go in search of the new Avatar to bring back to the Temple and train. When the representatives arrived at my hut four days after the incident with the Quad, one of them had cried, one of them had requested water, please, and the other had hugged me. Her name is Tamao. I don't like Tamao. 

I don't have a clue how they could have known it was me, but asking further questions will make it seem like I'm actually curious about this shade of the world and am open to the perks of my new status as Avatar - I am not. There are a lot of things that require clearing up: like what will become of my family, however small, and myself. If I'll be allowed the same activities as I once indulged in before this entire mess. If the world really has to know about my existence and what telling them will mean for me now.

Though all and more of these things will require clearing up, I simply won't encourage these people by asking for some answers. Worst comes to worst, I'll search for the answers myself and if that proves fruitless, a life in the dark doesn't sound too bad. No life at all doesn't sound bad either, as I stare out of the window into the heavy depth of the watery gorge we cross with the cart. A couple of miles more and we will arrive at the secluded Island which also serves as a meditation center for the budding clan of the Air Nomads. Great. More people. 

Feeling a pinch through my rough-to-the-touch dress, I instantaneously slap the hand of the culprit before I have time to identify said culprit. Haruna groans and lowers her brows at me, but that doesn't sway the smile already on her face as she looks at me. Of course she'll be happy. None of this is directly happening to her; she just watches from the sidelines, as usual. 

Haruna has always had an affinity for avoiding dire situations and knocking them over to my court. She's never cared a bit that she can't bend, can't fight to save her life, can't cook to save anyone's. She's perfectly satisfied with just being. And I know she's more than ecstatic that she dodged yet another potentially serious situation with this Avatar thing, and it's something you can see in her eyes when she smiles, hear in her words when she speaks. 

"This is so exciting, isn't it?" She asks me. I wait until Tamao, the Island representative, turns away before I reply her. 

"I want to die."

"Reiho Dokō-kikai! Not in front of the boy!" Haruna clutches Fidget to her generous chest and I cannot still my already rolling eyes. "You're the Avatar, the bridge between the spirit and mortal world. You're going to be more famous than that man from the plays... what's his name again... ?"

"Bolin something, and fame is beside the point. I have all these people who now depend on me to do something about this Water Tribe Uprising, and I have no clue how to go about it. I don't even know the whole story! Plus, I have all these elements I have to master, and these sub-abilities I'll have to pick up as well. And who knows how the world is going to react to me? Please, try and understand, Runa," even though I already know she won't. 

This is way past Haruna's level of comprehension. If it doesn't have anything to do with the baby and if it doesn't have anything to do with her, she can't fully grasp the significance of the events taking place. Her bubble protecting her stays right in place and once again, for the umpteenth time since I was born, I am left on the outside to face my trials and tribulations alone. You can see it in her eyes when she smiles. You can hear it in her words when she speaks. 

Haruna says something routine in order to soothe my growing nerves. Silent as I was during the beginning of the cart ride, I brush off her meaningless words and return to staring out of my window and going over my options in my head.

A couple of more times, I catch the Tamao girl, who looks a mere few years older than I am, staring at me with a look in her eye I can't quite place. I remember the only thing I know about her is that she's quick to hug strangers and I am not fond of her in the slightest. From the yellow and orange colors of the circular crest on the left-hand side of her representative uniform, consisting of a body suit in shades of red and grey, she is an air-bender, probably by blood, too. Her spunk and her blatant childlike demeanor doesn't suggest she is Harmonic Convergence-chosen.

Her hair is brown, straight and cut short to her shoulders, unlike mine that is a dark black, curly and only brushes the hairline of my neck on humid days. She stares at me like she has something to say, but the crease between my brows is restricting her. Good. I don't want to be rude, but I will be if it'll shut her up. I've already had my fill of conversations today, and as the telltale statue of Avatar Korra comes into view, my stomach knots develop stomach knots. 

We're almost at the island's port when something happens. There's a spit from the cart's coal engine, then it sputters to a mysterious stop.

Tamao and the other representative sitting with us - I don't know his name - both stand and Tamao immediately begins to scan outside of the windows while the man walks out into the engine room. 

"What's happening? Why have we stopped?" Haruna tries to hush Fidget and interrogate Tamao at the same time.

The young girl presses her thin, pink lips together, her brown eyes narrowing in worry. "I don't know. We shouldn't even have stopped at all," she says. "Might be an engine fault. Just wait here. I'll get Kaife and we'll figure out what's going-"

Tamao's sentence is interrupted by who I assume is Kaife falling out of the cart, possibly to his death. We all rise, expecting to see blood and pieces of his remains strewn about the gorge, but instead spot Kaife, suspended in ice. There's another hurl, another scream, and the other male representative has also been thrown out of the cart, caught in his own ice prison. 

Tamao attempts to spring into action - we all do. Just as we slide open the windows and try to do something, anything, the cart as a whole is pushed to the side by a force that has to be greater than mere hands of men. I don't really see it happen, but when I feel the cold engulf us and hear the cracking of ice as it stretches across the cart, I know. 

This is no engine fault. It's an ambush.


End file.
